In 1938 Canada’s navy comprised a handful of ships and barely 1000 personnel with no ship-building industry to speak of. By 1945, Canada’s Navy included 775 vessels and 90,000 personnel. Historians consider the growth and participation of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic and other campaigns as nothing short of remarkable. Little is known of the comparable growth in the shipbuilding industry and its provision of ships of many types to not only the Canadian Navy but the Royal Navy and the United States Navy as well. David Shirlaw’s book is an effort to address that shortfall in the nation's history.

Since 1673 when Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet portaged through the territory that is now Chicago, water transportation has been vital to the city's growth. In the early twentieth century, when Daniel Burnham put together his master plan for the design of Chicago—a plan intended to create a sense of civic virtue—he envisioned a grand municipal pier for public recreation near the central city. Later modified for multiple uses by the Chicago-Harbor Commission, Navy Pier opened in 1916. This glorious extension into Lake Michigan was a feat of engineering not unlike the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, and prompted a similar fascination. In this entertaining history, abundantly illustrated with 75 photographs and 32 color plates, Douglas Bukowski traces the origins and construction of Navy Pier, its "golden era" to 1940, its uses in the World War II home front, its college campus years, and its rediscovery and redevelopment for recreational use from the 1970s to the present. Daniel Burnham's advice to Chicago to "make no little plans" is beautifully captured in this book. A publication of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority of Chicago.

Clay Blair's best-selling naval classic Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan, is regarded as the definitive account of that decisive phase of the war in the Pacific. Nine years in the making, Hitler's U-boat War is destined to become the definitive account of the German submarine war against the Allies, or "The Battle of the Atlantic." It is an epic sea story, the most arduous and prolonged naval battle in all history. For a period of nearly six years, the German U-boat force attempted to blockade and isolate the British Isles, in hopes of forcing the British out of the war, thereby thwarting the Allied strategic air assault on German cities as well as Overlord, the Allied invasion of Occupied France. Fortunately for the Allies, the U-boat force failed to achieve either of these objectives, but in the attempt they sank 2,800 Allied merchant ships, while the Allies sank nearly 800 U-boats. On both sides, tens of thousands of sailors perished. The top secret Allied penetration of German naval codes, and, conversely, the top secret German penetration of Allied naval codes played important roles in the Atlantic naval battle. In order to safeguard the secrets of codebreaking in the postwar years, London and Washington agreed to withhold all official codebreaking and U-boat records. Thus for decade upon decade an authoritative and definitive history of the Battle of the Atlantic could not be attempted. The accounts that did appear were incomplete and full of errors of fact and false interpretations and conclusions, often leaving the entirely wrong impression that the German U-boats came within a whisker of defeating the Allies, a myth that persists. When London and Washington finally began to release the official records in the 1980s, Clay Blair and his wife, Joan, commenced work on this history in Washington, London, and Germany. They relied on the official records as well as the work of German, British, American, and Canadian naval scholars who published studies of bits and pieces of the story. The end result is this magnificent and monumental work, crammed with vivid and dramatic scenes of naval actions and dispassionate but startling new revelations and interpretations and conclusions about all aspects of the Battle of the Atlantic. The Blair history will be published in two volumes. This first volume, The Hunters, covers the first three years of the war, August 1939 to August 1942. Told chronologically, it is subdivided into two major sections, the War Against the British Empire, and the War Against the Americas. Volume II, The Hunted, to follow a year later, will cover the last years of the naval war in Europe, August 1942 to May 1945, when the Allies finally overcame the U-boat threat. Never before has Hitler's U-boat war been chronicled with such authority, fidelity, objectivity, and detail. Nothing is omitted. Even those who fought the Battle of the Atlantic will find no end of surprises. Later generations will benefit by having at hand an account of this important phase of World War II, free of bias and mythology.

Considers (82) S.J. Res. 27, (82) S.J. Res. 111.